


Years of regret

by Spethzen



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, DannyMay (Danny Phantom), Dannymay day 13, Grief/Mourning, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24169702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spethzen/pseuds/Spethzen
Summary: Years had passed by, so many years and still Maddie couldn´t seem to leave the past behind her. Her conscience would never let her forget that day and the one moment in her life she regretted the most.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	Years of regret

**Author's Note:**

> The Dannymay calendar asked me for regret and I delivered regret. I really do hope this is at least as painful to read as it was to write...  
> This is me trying my wings as a writer, feel free to comment your thoughts.

Years had passed by, so many years and still Maddie couldn´t seem to leave the past behind her. Her conscience would never let her forget that day and the one moment in her life she regretted the most.   
She had been out ghost hunting; she had just invented a new weapon she desperately wanted to try. The ultimate anti ghost weapon. Only a few hours had passed by when the perfect opportunity turned up. Phantom, enemy nr 1 was flying around in irrational patterns shooting at seemingly nothing but regular buildings. She loaded her weapon, making herself ready to pull the trigger at just the right moment. She wasn´t going to miss this time and risk him getting away.   
She just had to wait a few moments before the perfect moment occurred. He was out in the open totally oblivious of her being there. She pulled the trigger. The weapon went off exactly as she had calculated and the luminescent projectile hit Phantom right in the chest, penetrating it; leaving a hole the size of a golf ball. Phantom looked down a moment, visibly shocked. Then he started falling. Maddie shouted a celebratory "Yes!" as she saw her enemy fall and hit the ground with a loud thud. She started running towards the ghost, but as she came closer, she noticed that for some reason his appearance started to change. He didn’t just fade away as she had thought he would. Instead his white hair turned pitch black, his black jumpsuit turned into a white shirt and blue jeans and the green ectoplasm leaking out of his chest started to turn dark red. When she got closer, he moved his head a little, searching for her face. As his eyes met hers, she could see the glowing lime green eyes fade as they turned into an all too familiar shade of sky blue.   
“Mom?” Danny managed to say. He already had difficulty breathing and the red stain on his shirt quickly grew bigger and bigger. Maddie fell to her knees beside her son. He winced as she put her hand over the hole and pushed down. A puddle of blood was already forming around his body. She had shot her own son and he was bleeding out fast. He tried to talk but struggled to get the words out.   
“Shh don’t worry honey you are going to be fine, I´m going to fix this! Just stay here with me Danny, keep fighting. There are other people here calling for an ambulance just keep fighting!” She said over and over again. He shook his head, but it was barely more than small twitching from side to side. He struggled more and more to breathe as blood filled his lungs and throat and he coughed several times and tried to push her hand away from his wound. She didn’t notice it then and there, but she was crying hysterically repeating the same words over and over. Apologizing, telling him to keep fighting begging him not to leave her. He coughed again spitting out another puddle of blood that stained her as well as himself. He tried to say something again but had to try several times before he could find his voice.   
“I” cough “I´m sorry.” He looked her in the eyes as he said it. His eyes were clear begging her for forgiveness and then his eyes started losing focus as his face went blank from all expressions. His all so tense muscles relaxed, he exhaled and then his heart fluttered one last time and stopped beating.   
“NO! NO DANNY COME BACK! Please come back!” She screamed, called out to her son promising him everything between heaven and earth if he came back, but he couldn’t, it was too late. Danny Phantom was obliterated, blasted out of existence and Danny Fenton was dead, injured beyond saving. All of it caused by the weapon she had built with her own two hands. Her son was gone forever and she Maddie Fenton had pulled the trigger to seal his fate. 

She and Jack had searched the entire ghost zone over and over, spent years searching among billions of ghosts in their attempt to try and find the lost soul of their only son. But every mission had proven unsuccessful. Jack could never understand it. But Maddie knew why they could never find the ghost of their son. She herself hadn´t only injured his ghost half, she had erased phantom from existence. Danny could never become a ghost because that half of him didn’t exist anymore.   
Not long after Danny´s death, Jazz had left for college. She never returned to Amity park after that, the loss of her little brother was too great, all the memories too painful. Even though she knew her mom was suffering from guilt and regret about what she had done Jazz had never been able to look her mom in the eyes after that day. Maddie knew that was the case and never judged her daughter for the decision to leave. She couldn’t face to look at herself in the mirror either. A few years after they had given up the search after their son, she and Jack went separate ways as well. Danny was never going to come back and Amity park was just too filled with memories. It was too painful for Jack to stay in the past, he needed to get out of there, try to move on and at least try to live the little that was left of his life.   
But Maddie couldn’t. It didn’t matter how painful it was, she just couldn’t leave her little boy behind. If she did, she was scared she would forget about him, that he would fade away. She was already forgetting small details about him, the sound of his laugh, how his hair looked when he had just gotten out of bed, how her little boy had smelled. She sometimes spent hours just sitting inside his room trying to catch the smallest memory she thought she had lost. As another couple of years passed by, she started to forget more and more, the sound of his voice, how he looked when he was happy, how tall he had been. There were only one memory, one single memory that never faded and that was his last minutes alive. She could describe every little detail of every second. It had only taken a few minutes but every second of them had felt like an hour.   
Why didn’t she listen to her children when they said that not all ghosts were bad? They had called Phantom a hero so many times, why had she never listened? If she had then Danny would have lived. Why didn’t she listen? 

At last, almost two decades after she had killed her son, she dared to visit his grave for the first time since his funeral. She had wanted to for a long time but always decided against it. She was her son´s killer, she didn’t deserve to disturb him at his final resting place. But her memory was failing her, and she was missing her little boy so much.   
As she reached the grave, she could see that it wasn’t entirely untouched, there were leftovers from flowers here and there, but it was clear nobody had bothered to come here for several months at least. Most of the people who had loved him in life wasn’t here anymore. Everyone who really knew him had left the town in an attempt to move on. Everyone had left except for the person who killed him. No tears left her eyes as she stared at the headstone that wore her sons name. She had run out of tears to cry years ago. She sat down in the grass and leaned her sore back against the cold, smooth, surface.  
“I´m so sorry for this sweetie, you have no idea of how much I regret what I did to you. If there only had been a way to make it all undone, if I only could have one more day where I could tell you how much I love you, how much I miss you. The last thing you ever said to me was that you were sorry. I shot you down, I killed you and you were the one to apologize to me. Why did you apologize? Why were your last words an apology when everything I had done was so much worse?” She said, knowing very well he couldn’t hear her, knowing she would get no answers.  
“For someone claiming to be so sorry you took a hell of a time showing up here to apologize.” She jumped at the sound of the weak yet familiar voice. Had she really heard it or had the voice only been in her head?  
“Danny? Is that you?” She asked hesitantly not daring to get her hopes up.  
“No, not really. The Danny you are thinking of are a pile of bones six feet straight down. His ghost part ceased to exist several minutes before he bled out himself. Too bad you had to invent a weapon that worked so well. His ghost half probably could have saved him and if not, he would at least have gone full ghost.” The eerie voice answered.  
“I-I didn’t know! I wish I had known but I didn’t. If you are not my Danny, then who are you?!” she said feeling fear and dread prickle her skin.  
“Ohh but you did know something, didn’t you? Deep within yourself you knew Phantom wasn’t really evil. Why would he spend all his time fighting other ghosts from taking over, why would he constantly save human lives if he truly was evil?” The voice was right of course. She had been so stupid, calling herself an inventor, a scientist but could you truly be a scientist if you thought you already had all the answers? Did she ever truly try to learn the true nature of ghosts? Hadn´t she always formed all of their new discoveries to fit within the borders of her own believes?   
“Who are you?” she repeated herself.   
“You can think of me as a manifestation of thought if you want to. I am after all not truly real. I am merely a construct of thought. I only ever exist as an echo of a memory.” Maddie got chills down her spine.  
“So you are telling me I am going mad?” She got no answer. She tried asking other questions, but the malicious voice seemed to have gone quiet. 

If only that had been the end of it.

That night he came to her once again, but this time the voice had a body. The plain white shirt was still covered in dirt and blood, so where his jeans. His hair had been combed into an unfamiliar hair style, just like it had been for the funeral. His face was pale and sunken in but worst of all was his eyes, they were blood-shot and red.   
“You shouldn’t have come back to his grave Maddie, you knew he did not want you there. Perhaps you just wanted to torture him some more, didn’t you? You shouldn’t have stayed here, keeping all the places of his memories to yourself. You should have left just like everybody else did.   
Get it into your head. Your son doesn’t exist anymore Maddie you made sure of that. You have been hoarding all these memories for years, clinging so desperately to the physical memories of your son you barely have anything left that makes you remember the real him. You will regret that you didn’t leave as well when you had the chance…” That night Maddie woke up in her bed with a bloodcurdling cream.

Jack and Jazz shared a car down to Amity park, this was a trip they needed to do together. In Jazz´s lap was a box containing a small but decorative birthday cake. They were to visit Maddie to celebrate her 65th birthday. Neither of them felt specifically comfortable as they parked next to the mental institution, but at least they had each other as support. Sadly the visit didn’t last as long nor did it go as well as they had hoped. Maddie was just laying cradled in her bed rocking back and forth saying   
“Danny isn’t real, Danny don’t exist, I erased Danny from existence. Danny isn’t real, the evil voice is only in my head.” She said the same thing over and over again in different variations. She regretted she hadn’t listened to her kids, she regretted that she had killed her son, she regretted she hadn’t left him alone as everybody else. She was regret now, there was nothing left in her but regret.


End file.
